Be Still and Know Me

We held no conversations. Shared no childhood stories. We never met each other’s family or griped about community life. All the things friends usually do, Fr. Duane and I never did. Our friendship couldn’t grow out of words. So it grew out of love.

He was an unlikely brother. I was twenty-seven and he was eighty-three. I was a postulant and he was a missionary priest. The monks told me he’d evangelized in Brazil for decades. Now he could hardly manage a single word. Dementia had robbed him of those everyday things I took for granted: coordination, speech, focus. Out of all this, what hope was there for friendship? I had assumed knowing a man’s background and dreams, his successes and failures, his likes and dislikes, was the same as knowing the person. But the beauty of the soul is not communicated in these terms. No, the language of the soul is one of abiding. In praying the Divine Office with him, ushering him to bed, and helping him to eat, I didn’t get to know about Fr. Duane: I got to know Fr. Duane. 

After a few months of being with him, the brothers told a bunch of old stories about his tremendous work ethic, his playful stubbornness, and his eagerness for cleaning. None of these surprised me. In that wry smile so often stretched across his face, I knew his mischief. In those countless moments he quietly rose to get out of his wheelchair the second I turned my back, I saw his vigor for life. In the careful folding of his napkin after every meal, I understood his appreciation for order. The man I heard about from the brothers was the same man I cared for everyday. So when someone asked me about all the time spent in the company of a monk with dementia, I confidently told him, “Don’t be fooled. Fr. Duane hasn’t gone anywhere. He’s still right here with us.” Until he wasn’t.

My first year in the monastery was his last. After midnight on May 8th, his breathing became heavier, slower. I moved my chair to his bedside. Hand on his shoulder. Leaned closer. Looked. He passed away in the same way that our friendship passed: without a word. 

Br. Fulton Neumann is a novice of St. Benedict’s Abbey. A native of Texas and a convert to the Catholic faith, his spiritual journey has brought him to discern a future in our monastic community.

Learn more about the life of Fr. Duane at kansasmonks.org/necrology/fr-duane-roy